This is the first story in the "Stories from Under the Golden Roof" series. This stories contains some dialogue in German and the Tyrolean dialect, translations of the German dialogue is included. The German has not been edited. Any errors are entirely the fault of the author.
Wade is a poor, self-exiled translator meets the beautiful Ana, whose plans for him are less-than pure.
Wade, a poor translator, meets the beautiful, nefarious Anja
Chapter 1
The noise of the customers placing orders and chatting in German kept distracting Wade from his work; he loved listening to the customers and waitresses chirp g
rüss di
and p
fiat di
to each other like birds as they came and went. The snatches of conversations in their sing-song voices punctuated with
ja eh
,
amal
, and
oder
kept pulling him away from the same two sentences he kept reading over and over as his eyes blurred from looking at the computer screen.
He looked up when the waitress arrived. With a "
bitte schön
," she set his cappuccino with a leaf design in the foam, the two cinnamon cookies that came with it, and a glass of water on the side next to his laptop. "
Danke. Haben Sie viel zu tun heute
? (Thanks. Do you have a lot to do today)?" He asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. Her blond hair was pulled into a pony tail, her black shirt was stuffed into the rim of her black pants and money belt giving her a look of efficiency. "Meh, not really. The tourists usually come later in the morning. Are you a student?"
"No, I have an interview over there in a bit," he gestured to the building across the street. "I always drink a coffee before an interview. It's a good luck ritual, though it hasn't been working so well lately," he added grimly.
He had been woken up by a call from a harried-sounding woman asking if he was available for an interview later that morning. He quickly put on his now-wrinkled white button-up shirt, dark blue slacks and hurried over. He decided he could finish his translation assignment while he waited. He had to send it in before lunch, it was nearly finished anyway, he just wanted to proofread a few lines he had been having trouble with. "
Wie lange haben Sie hier gearbeitet
? (How long have you worked here?)"
She leaned over and looked at the line of text highlighted on his computer screen, Where the fabric of her blouse parted around the buttons, Wade could make out the shape of her pale breast pushed up tantalizingly by her bra, "
Die Frau von der die Rede war
."
"I'm translating a news article." Wade was quite proud of this. He had dreamed of being a translator since high school. It always seemed so glamorous in his imagination, you could finish your project for the day while sitting in your local coffee shop. But the reality was that when you can only afford one meal of rice or noodles a day, occasionally with chopped up hot dogs, it wasn't so glamourous anymore. Still he was doing something he loved. "How would you translate it?"
"I would say, 'The woman who gave the speech.'"
Wade turned back to the screen, surprised. He was going to go with 'the woman everyone was talking about,' but now he could see that her version was correct.
"
Sie k
ö
nnen ja gut
ü
bersetzen
(You translate well)."
"Meh, not really. We do have to learn English early here. I speak English so much at work, I almost forget German is my native language." She laughed.
Well, good for you
, Wade grumbled to himself.
The waitress straightened back up and held up a receipt, "So, €2.50 please." She held her chin out while she waited.
Wade hands her some Euro coins, "
Bitte, stimmt schon
."
"Thank you." She put the change into the money bag at her waist. "What job are you interviewing for?"
"It's a translation job."
"
Na, viel Gl
ü
ck
, good luck, as we say.
"
Danke
."
Wade fingered the edge of his coffee cup and watched the waitress walk away.
What do I have? 'English Only' written all over my face
?
Getting Austrians to speak German rather than English to him when he spoke to them in German was a challenge. It felt to him like you had to practically speak perfect German before an Austrian would respond to you in German. To get that far though, you had to get them to have a conversation with you in German. It was a vicious circle that he had to repeat each time he met someone new. It didn't help that his accent came out and grammar failed him when he was nervous.
It must be some secret code or some magical words that they don't want us knowing
, he laughed at his own fantasy, though it did seem to have some validity.
His first week in this new country, he had gotten a couple writing jobs and things looked bright, but then he didn't get anything the next two weeks. He was happily surprised when one company sent him a second, larger job, but so far he had barely gotten enough work to pay for food, to say nothing about rent. Now this waitress, he assumed she was a university student, translated better than he did. His hopes for getting this job grew dimmer by the second.
He looked at the time on his computer. 15 minutes to go, '
Fuck it
.' He saved the file and sent it off to the client before draining his cappuccino in one swig. The street was full of people hurrying off to work, the cool fall air felt good on his cheeks. He waited for a car to pass before rushing across the street and up the stairs of an old, grey building.
The secretary in the front office directed him to a large room with several large desks with several chairs at each of them. He walked over to where a middle-aged woman sat bent over a stack of papers. The austere wooden cross hanging on the wall behind the woman was silently judging him, frowning in disapproval at his wrinkled shirt and slacks. He was perspiring slightly from walking up the stairs. A bead of sweat ran down his cheek, he hoped he hadn't ruined his shirt.
The woman looked up from the resume in front of her as Wade approached. "Are you Wade Sprakwyn? Thank you for coming in today, I apologize that we weren't able to give you much information over the phone." The woman shook his hand. "My name is Gabi Stein. I am a project manager here. We do translation services and some large projects have come in that need to be finished quickly." Wade's ears pricked up at that. "In your resume, you wrote that you have done some literary translation. Is this something you might be able to help us with?"
"Y-yes, I'd be interested in helping."
